Ms Marcella Levey1, Mr David Schmidt2, Ms Kerryn Maher3
1Southern NSW Local Health District, Moruya, Australia, 2NSW Health: Health Education and Training Institute, St Leonards, Australia, 3Southern NSW Local Health District, Queanbeyan, Australia
Biography:
Marcella Levey is an Allied Health Educator working in the regional and rural Southern NSW Local Health District. Marcella started her journey as an occupational therapist in large Sydney hospitals, then to inner city London then rural areas of Scotland, the Northern Territory and finally to Southern NSW. Her experience also includes health promotion and public health. More recently, she has been fortunate to combine research into her everyday work practice as part of the HETI Rural Research and Capacity Building Program, with her focus being on quality in video virtual care for allied health.
Abstract:
Conducting allied health intervention via Virtual Care is no longer a question of why or whether, but how we adopt virtual care so that allied health provides quality interventions.
Video virtual care has proven benefits for a broad range of allied health interventions; has acceptance by health consumers as a valid means to deliver health services and has the potential to provide more equitable services to people in rural, regional, and remote NSW.
Despite a rapid adoption of video virtual care during COVID 19, the rate of providing video virtual care has in many cases declined for allied health. In order to encourage allied health to provide service we need to know what a quality service looks like.
This mixed methods study surveyed allied health professionals across rural, regional, and remote areas in NSW Health. The survey questions are guided by evidence in the literature and used the Donabedian constructs on quality as a theoretical basis for defining a quality intervention.
Focus groups were then conducted to gain further insights into the findings of the survey.
The study provides insights into factors that provide a quality experience when conducting video virtual care with clients and what is required for current and future competencies.
Information from this study will guide future training in competencies when using virtual care and building a quality environment of care. The findings have the potential to increase access, equity, and timely intervention to a range of assessments and therapies in rural, regional, and remote allied health.